Suzen Green’s takes knitting into the streets with Yo Calgary!, part of this year’s Artcity

Calgary streets are ultra-clean relative to Berlin, with its world-renowned graffiti culture. There, debates about whether graffiti equals art are buried under decades of elaborate mural-making, postering, public intervention and quirky art in situ around town. While our city launched a Public Art Program in 2004 that has several huge art commissions on the go, it takes a more aggressive approach to policing independent public art and graffiti — and what’s deemed appropriate adornment of our spaces.
    Enter the approachable and gently controversial public works of Suzen Green. Her proposal to knit socks, hats and other garb for bronze public sculptures as part of Artcity has met with some awkward negotiations.
    Green worked together with Artcity programmer Wednesday Lupypciw and the public art program administration to approach the dressing of public sculptures for just two weeks during the annual festival. Apparently, the owners of the well-known public artworks had objections. A string of rejections underscores the lack of imagination and entrenched conservativism that colours Calgary’s appreciation of art in public spaces. It also points towards a belief that public works such as sculpture, mosaics and murals are “art” whereas interventions, graffiti and other temporary works that contribute to the visual patina of the city are not. Fortunately, two sites agreed to host the works, and with the hemming and hawing about signage and safety out of the way, the project is proceeding with Mario Armengol’s Family of Man sculptures outside the Calgary Board of Education building and Harry O’Hanlon’s Family of Horses grazing in City Hall’s courtyard.
    Fast Forward spoke with Suzen about taking knitting into the streets just as Artcity was poised to host her public knitting interventions.
    Fast Forward: You’re getting ready to install your hand-knitted garments on public sculptures — how did this project start?
    Suzen Green: At the beginning, I wanted to go around to all the sculptures and do guerilla-style graffiti using knitting. I was going to do it anyway (as an independent artist project), but then the Artcity opportunity came up. Working with a big public festival meant that we had to clear it with the city.
    What sculptures did you have your sights set on covering?
    I wanted to do William McElcheran’s The Conversation men in front of The Bay, but they said the knitting would “devalue” the sculpture and it would not be appropriate. The argument was about being out of line with the values of the original work. I also wanted to do garments for Barbara Paterson’s The Famous Five and pillows for their chairs, but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently, there was this big hoopla when the Royal Bank sculptures were erected, because they are nude. I thought it would be really funny to knit them hats for the winter.
    With the Calgary Board of Education, we talked to an executive to show him what we were planning to do. His first reaction was, “You aren’t going to do penis cozies, are you?”
    There were a lot of compromises to get the two sites that we did, and everything came with strings attached. When you see the work, you will also see signs (that the city required us to attach to the knitting) explaining it, so that people don’t get confused. The sign describes the details of the sculpture and the fact that it has been “appropriated with permission” by Suzen Green.
    You’re disrupting people’s daily landscape — confronting them with something that’s radically different from what they expect to be there.
    The Family of Man socks will be a bright, hand-knit pattern measuring over a metre-and-a-half tall. It’s so bright and tacky that even people who are driving by will be able to see them. If you think of the yarn section at Wal-Mart or Value Village, they have Satan red, sea foam green (like you might see in a hospital) and bright pylon orange — that’s my style!
    It might make people approach the sculptures again, rather than just passing by. I’m hoping that people will actually go up and touch them. It’s whimsical enough that people will chuckle, but on a deeper level, maybe they will also look at public art, knitting and textiles differently.
    People have a very passive relationship with the places they live — maybe pushing their esthetic buttons means that they will take a more active role in culture.
    Your work taps into a broader movement of craft activism in public — what are other graffiti-knitters doing?
    There’s a group called Knitta that mostly knits big squares with buttons that can be easily wrapped around a post, car antenna or tree — they call it “tagging.” It’s an easy shape to put up quickly anywhere (in random locations). My work is site specific — instead of doing a basic shape, I say, “that horse needs a hat!” My objective is to make a recognizable garment to install outside of its usual context.
    You’re tagging, but you’ve also had to ask for permission. How does this change the intent of a guerrilla-style project?
    I like this idea and I want to do it in other cities, but I would never go through these channels again. It would have to be totally renegade. I’ve dreamed of covering the dinosaurs in Drumheller. It would be absurd to go in the very early morning and then just watch how people react.